Mirror Mirror on the Wall...

Overlooked

I can remember an episode of the Lone Ranger on television. Tonto was hidden amongst the boulders on a bluff overlooking a narrow passage leading into a valley. The Lone Ranger was aboard his trusty stallion Silver near the valley entrance below, concealed behind a thicket of bushes, waiting to pounce on the unwitting outlaw. Tonto sees the bad guy entering the trail to the passageway and signals the Lone Ranger with a teeny-tiny mirror. Surprise! One more outlaw apprehended. Hi Ho Silver!

After that episode, every kid on my block got one. We developed secret signal codes to use with our mirrors. We would play games where you weren’t allowed to speak. You communicated using only the secret code by flashing your signal mirror. We drove our parents crazy. The parents in our neighborhood got together and confiscated every one of these wonderful devices from us. (This occurred after my buddy Dickie flashed his mirror in Mr. Stewart’s car when he was driving home after work. My parents said Mr. Stewart almost had a heart attack and ran off the road).

It seems to me that man has a penchant for developing uses for things that were never intended by their original inventor. Sometimes, we characterize this process positively with words like progress, innovation, enhancement or improvement. At other times, we refer to the outcome of this process in a negative way with phrases like unintended uses, unanticipated consequences or clear and present danger. Finally, depending upon how we view the outcome of this process, we have a tendency to attribute value-laden terms to the results. We use terms like good, fun, helpful, useful, better, more efficient, bad, axis of evil, destructive and dangerous.

It is imperative that Christians in the U.S. become more informed about how this process really works. This is a subject that we seem to have overlooked. We are people called to become Christ-like. As Scripture states: “18And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.[i] This article is designed to assist us in taking another look in the mirror. Let me explain.

The Essentials

Have you ever thought about the fundamental essentials that come with a house, apartment, or hotel room these days? Stuff like doors, toilets, sinks, showers, lights, shelves, running water, electricity, closets, floor coverings, and windows. We expect to find these accoutrements when we walk into any dwelling today in the U.S. One item we seem to overlook when compiling a list of the items that comprise our expectations is mirrors. Think about it. Even if the dwelling is brand new, you can usually find a mirror installed in at least one room of your accommodations.

Mirrors have become elevated to the list of essentials in our society. We live in a society where the old era of “one mirror in the bathroom” has progressed to an age with mirrors all over the place. Mirrors are big business. I Googled the term “mirrors” and 19,800,000 results popped up. Mirrors are no longer optional. They’ve become essentials. We’re surrounded! We’ve become a mirror, mirror on the wall society.

A strange phenomenon occurs when something is transformed from an option to an essential in this country (other than the fact that by sheer numbers, essentials dwarf options); we humans begin to take them for granted. How many times do you see yourself in a mirror everyday without recalling what you actually saw? The last time you drove your car, which mirror, left, right, or rearview did you look into before you exited the vehicle? What is the date you intentionally looked yourself in the eyes in front of a mirror, other than to apply make-up, pluck your eyebrows, or get some foreign object out of your eye? If you’re honest, the answers to these questions are “I don’t have a clue.”

Essentials have an interesting way of de-sensitizing us. Becoming desensitized is an important part of taking things for granted. You know that you’re taking something for granted when you don’t miss it until you can’t find it, it’s stolen, closed or doesn’t work properly.

For the Christian, we have become insensitive to the fact that we are created in His image, for His purposes. We are His essentials. We have come to take ourselves for granted, numb to the fact that we are His witnesses to this world. After embracing the Face of mercy, love, forgiveness and grace in Jesus Christ, far too many of us have journeyed on in life, somehow losing the luster of the intended preciousness of our relationship with Him. We received a glimpse of ourselves in Christ, listened to the word and have moved on, somehow losing degrees of the wonder of what we had seen, heard and experienced. As the Scripture says: 22Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. 23Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like a man who looks at his face in a mirror 24and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like.[ii]

Many of us who claim the name of Christ are, in fact, lost. It’s time to re-orient ourselves to what it means to be one of His essentials. I adore what theologian Thomas Merton says, “In order to find God in ourselves, we must stop looking at ourselves, stop checking and verifying ourselves in the mirror of our own futility, and be content to be in Him and to do whatever He wills, according to our limitations, judging our acts not in the light of our own illusions, but in the light of His reality which is all around us in the things and people we live with.”[iii]

It is essential that the luster He intended our lives to reflect be restored to the body of Christ in the U.S. How? You ask?

Mirror, mirror on the wall…it’s the next question that plagues us all.

The Glare

The new Walt Disney Concert Hall in downtown Los Angeles is being renovated…again. After spending $274 million on this project, the daytime glare off of the Hall’s exterior raised temperatures within the interiors of the living quarters of adjacent condo’s fifteen degrees, distracted pedestrians and blinded motorists. That’s flashy! That’s hot! That’s L.A.

History is replete with the insidious reality whereby deliberate attempts to make us the fairest of them all, end up as embarrassing snafus. Disney’s Concert Hall has plenty of company, including the Christian community in the U.S. One of the primary reasons behind these recurring historical facts is that we continue to fail to take into account the impact our witness will have on our own, our neighbors, and the observing world. As characterized by one author, “The world is watching us. They are watching and wondering whether we will be different.”[iv] Another writes, “To understand the love-hate relationship, the attraction-repulsion toward America that exists in many parts of the world and is widespread in the Muslim world, we must not only know who we think we are and how we view others but try to understand how others might see us.”[v]

When you take a look at the U.S. Christian community today, you’d better grab a pair of polarized lenses. Christianity was never intended to be an institution that reflected glitz and glare by virtue of it’s exterior. I am convinced that Christ weeps over the rancid name calling in the U.S. secular and Christian media between those who claim His name. Christianity, from its inception has been a counterintuitive faith. It is intended to be a movement attractive by virtue of the transformation that occurs in the interior life of those who claim the name of Christ, giving all the glory to He who makes this all possible. Yet, without the essential reflection of Christ to those around us, we are just more glare that people have learned to turn away from. The reflection of Christianity in the U.S. finds itself in desperate need of a renovation it seems unable to envision. Have we been blinded by our own light?

The Disney Concert Hall fiasco had plenty of blame to spread around; the designer, the materials provider, the general contractor etc. The blame game is simply another form of glaring at one another for the purpose of distancing ourselves from the shame and guilt associated with the conundrum. It’s a disingenuous attempt to avoid personal responsibility. Heaven knows we Christians are no different. Author Donald Miller captures the essence of this point in the following; “I think every conscious person, every person who is awake to the functioning principles within his reality, has a moment where he stops blaming the problems in the world on group think, on humanity and authority, and starts to face himself. I hate this more than anything. This is the hardest principle within Christian spirituality for me to deal with. The problem is not out there; the problem is the needy beast of a thing that lives in my chest.”[vi]

Pound your chest three times and keep reading.

The Illusion

In the U.S., it seems that a central, biblical truth of our faith that becoming Christ-like has somehow become optional or illusory. This present day mirage has become an illusion because so many Christians in the U.S. think that it’s optional, strangely elusive or doesn’t apply to them. Frankly, others feel that “I’ve got a good handle of my faith and relationship with Jesus.” (What they are really saying is Jesus has limits that they have reached regarding the personal transformation possibilities). Both camps have succumbed to a subtle, destructive illusion.

Again, you are essential to Him. It’s time to get honest. We don’t behave in accordance with the tenets of our faith[1] because we really don’t believe what we have been told or what we say we believe. Unfortunately, that’s not faith at all. That’s maintaining an image or managing an appearance. It’s simply living the illusion.

The next question that plagues us all now becomes How do we become accountable to Him? One author shares some wisdom that is pertinent here; “Again and again, I’ve heard active citizens say that what motivates them the most is the desire to respect what they see in the mirror. The exercise isn’t about vanity, but about values, about taking stock of ourselves and comparing the convictions we say we hold with the lives we actually lead. If the eyes are windows to the soul, and faces reflections of character, looking in the mirror lets us step back from the flux of our lives and hold ourselves accountable.”[vii]

The next question above casts a light upon the fact that the lives we actually lead are somewhat contradictory to the Christian convictions we say we hold. This is an issue of authenticity. Part of the answer, I believe, is contained in the following from A.W. Tozer: “Artificiality is one curse that will drop away the moment we kneel at Jesus’ feet and surrender ourselves to His meekness. Then we will not care what people think of us so long as God is pleased. Then what we are will be everything; what we appear will take its place far down the scale of interest for us. Apart from sin we have nothing of which to be ashamed. Only an evil desire to shine makes us want to appear other than we are.”[viii]

Perhaps we must begin to desire to break away from the precarious comfort that the illusion of glitz, glare, complacency and comfort have blinded us with. Illusions are optional. Our maturing beyond them is essential. Yet, in some peculiar way, I have the feeling that this maturing may distinctly involve humility. Not just an intellectual acknowledgement of humility but an actual metamorphosis into becoming a child of God again. As Harold Kushner writes, “The real child will come to life only when the illusory child dies.”[ix]

It’s time to get honest and begin to wrestle with the illusions perpetuated by mainstream Christianity in this country. The authenticity of our faith is legitimately judged by its results. All the results are in and, at best, they are perplexing. At worst, they are embarrassing and shameful.[x] Maybe the following from C.S. Lewis captures the essence of the challenge in our midst: “Fine feelings, new insights, greater interest in ‘religion’ mean nothing unless they make our actual behaviour better; just as in illness, ‘feeling better’ is not much good if the thermometer shows that your temperature is still going up. In that sense the outer world is quite right to judge Christianity by its results. Christ told us to judge by results…Our careless lives set the outer world talking; and we give them grounds for talking in a way that throws doubt on the truth of Christianity.”[xi]

I believe this to be a critical item within the next question agenda the emerging church must intentionally explore. This is an essential part of moving beyond the known, into experiencing mysterious, new dimensions of becoming Christ-like that He so desperately desires to reveal to us. It’s akin to lightening your pack on a weeklong hike, discarding those items you have been carrying about that have only served to weigh you down. It is an indispensable part of moving beyond where we presently find ourselves. As Leonard Sweet says, “Christianity is a mystery religion. When you’ve wrung the mystery out of Christianity, you’ve wrung its neck.”[xii]

This process of de-illusionment is not optional. It’s essential, as stated by sociologist Daniel Levinson in the following: “As he attempts to reappraise his life, a man discovers how much it has been based on illusions, and he is faced with the task of de-illusionment. By this expression I mean a reduction of illusions, a recognition that long held assumptions and beliefs about self and world are not true. This process merits special attention because illusions play so vital a role in our lives throughout the life cycle.” [xiii]

Rub your eyes, throw some cold water in your face, refocus and let’s move on, shall we?

The Reflection

Imagine you were blind from birth, living without the sense of vision. What would the term reflection mean to you? Living in total darkness, you couldn’t see a reflection, even through an incredible exertion of your own willpower. You wouldn’t be standing in front of a mirror for countless hours attempting to admire your own image. No, the manner in which you would be capable of comprehending your sense of self, others and the world around you would be quite different. In fact, your ability to grasp your sense of God would be altered significantly, versus those of us who with sight.

Why is it then that Christianity in the U.S. is so vision-impaired, when it is composed by a vast majority of people who have absolutely no problems whatsoever with sight? As one author writes, “I believe that the crisis of vision is at the core of the crisis of reflection. We simply don’t spend enough time reflecting upon why we do what we do. As a consequence, at many levels, the images and values of modern culture subvert our lives, families, and Christian organizations, and we scarcely seem to notice.”[xiv] Once again, I believe this issue of reflection to be a vitally important item within the next question agenda emerging Christianity has an opportunity to uncover.

In terms of the reflective properties of the Christian life in the U.S. modeled for us in Scripture with terms like image, likeness, resemblance, Christ-like and disciple, we have reached a juncture where we must confess that we have been admiring the wrong image in the mirror for far too long. This self-righteous fixation on the wrong object of our attention is, I believe, the root of the crisis of reflection. This point is eloquently portrayed in the following from Oswald Chambers: “The outstanding characteristic of a Christian is this unveiled frankness before God so that the life becomes a mirror for other lives. By being filled with the Spirit we are transformed, and by beholding we become mirrors. You always know when a man has been beholding the glory of the Lord; you feel in your inner spirit that he is the mirror of the Lord’s Own character. Beware of anything which would sully that mirror in you.[xv]”

Philip Yancey once wrote, “If we cannot detect God’s presence in the world, it may be that we have been looking in the wrong places.”[xvi] Perhaps we have prostituted our God-given ability to see into a form of diabolical spiritual blindness. The present-day, primary use of our sense of sight has corrupted our willingness to spend the gift of time each day seated at the feet of He who created it, reflecting upon His majesty, forgiveness, mercy, grace and love. Just as the moon cannot reflect the sun’s illumination if it’s light is eclipsed by the Earth’s position between them, it serves no purpose to howl at the moon or shout at the sun. It is our position that must change.

We must modify our present posture to reflect the Son’s illumination to this, His world. This is essential.

Summary:

If this article has got you all steamed up, or if you cannot see the way out of our present-day, foggy conundrum, that’s okay. You’re not alone. Take some comfort from the Scripture that says, “12Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.[xvii] However, don’t rest there. Yearn to move beyond what you can see. Develop a passion for the reality of the unseen. If there is one thing this article has attempted to do is to reinvigorate your appetite for the mystery and majesty of Christ, beyond the existing mirrors we have erected and become to reflect Him to the world. As A.W. Tozer wrote, “We must shift our interest from the seen to the unseen.”[xviii]

It’s time to move reverently beyond what we Christians in the U.S. have come to say we believe or what we know, while our lives reflect dramatically different images. It’s time to confess that “militant ignorance helps us deny the most destructive results of what we say and do.”[xix] However, as one author points out, “History need not determine the future.”[xx]

As we move forward, maybe it’s time to recognize that the phrase “Mirror, mirror on the wall” is a phrase from a fairy tale. Yet, it is only half of the entire phrase. The final part of the phrase is a question. It’s the next question that plagues us all. Christianity in the U.S. has demonstrated that when the next question becomes who’s the fairest of them all, the magnetism of Christ’s witnesses to this world morphs into something He never intended. It is transformed from a Divinely ordained attraction reflected through the loving lifestyle of a people of The Way, to a people of the Choice; choosing to revel in the institution of our own image rather than He whose name we claim.

Perhaps it’s time to change the rhyme we’ve become so accustomed to and cry out from the depths of our souls, Jesus! Jesus! Lord of All! Teach us to reflect Your love to all! Are you up to it? …it’s the next question that plagues us all. Merton sums it up quite nicely; “For love must not only seek the truth in the lives of those around us; it must find it there. But when we find the truth that shapes our lives we have found more than an idea. We have found a Person. We have come upon the actions of One Who is still hidden, but Whose work proclaims Him holy and worthy to be adored. And in Him we also find ourselves.”[xxi] As Richard Foster says, “Lone Ranger Christianity is a contradiction in terms.”[xxii]

Finally, a man enters a busy office and raises his voice over the din…”Excuse me. Have you seen a real, live disciple of Jesus around here today?” After a four second silence, an obscure voice is heard from the back of the room, “Next Question.”

God Bless you,

Bibliography and Notes:

[1] See George Barna’s State of the Church: 2005 at http://www.barna.org

P.116

[x] Dahl, Bill Chef Barna’s State of the Church 2005, http://the-next-wave-ezine.info/issue78/index.cfm?id=1&ref=COVERSTORY

[xiii] Levinson, Daniel J., The Seasons Of A Man’s Life, New York: Ballantine Books, a division of Simon & Schuster, 1978, p.192

[xiv] Sine, Tom Mustard Seed versus McWorld: Reinventing Life and Faith for the Future, Copyright (c) 1999 by Tom Sine, Baker Books, A Division of Baker Book House Co., Grand Rapids, Michigan 49516, p. 146.

[xv] Chambers, Oswald My Utmost for His Highest Journal Barbour Publishing, Inc. Copyright (c) 1935 Discovery House Publishers & Dodd, Mead & Company, Inc. Copyright (c) 1963 Oswald Chambers Publications Association Ltd. p. January 23^rd

[xxi] Merton, Thomas No Man Is an Island, Barnes & Noble Books, New York, NY Ó Copyright 1955 by The Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani, Ó Copyright renewed 1983 by The Trustees of the Merton Legacy Trust. P. 9.

Bill Dahl

Mirror Mirror on the Wall…

Overlooked

The Essentials

The Glare

The Illusion

The Reflection

Bibliography and Notes:

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"How might words, images and ideas open minds, warm hearts and inspire imagination? May you find them refreshing and share them among your people."

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